


i see you holding your breath

by goinghost



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (well almost drowning), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Drowning, F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Lighthouses, buddy and vespa have TWO meet uglies, is rescuing someone from drowning considered a meet ugly?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: Vespa Ilkay was tired. After vowing not to return to the lighthouse that had haunted her childhood, her father's abrupt death forces her to figure out what's going to happen to the one place she'd rather never think about. That being said, she was quickly discovering that maybe the beachside town of Ranga wasn't the worst place to be after all. At least the company was nice.--An AU where Buddy is a mermaid, Vespa is bedraggled, and a song is sung.
Relationships: (but very background) (they show up twice), Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 34
Kudos: 27
Collections: The Penumbra Podcast Femslash February 2021!





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> here it is! my femslash february fic! it also happens to be my first real multichapter with like a plot and stuff that i've ever published. i've been working on it for a few weeks and it's been a blast. there's a definite lack of multichapter vesbud aus so i'm hoping this scratches someone's itch!
> 
> i'm gonna be updating every monday until the end of the month! today's update is a prologue and chapter one so make sure to click to the next chapter! after this it'll just be one chapter per week. 
> 
> shoutout to my beta, nova, and also the vesbud twitter gc for being so supportive as i was writing this!! y'all are all great <3
> 
> title from 'body to flame' by lucy dacus 
> 
> cw for (almost) drowning and mentions of vespa's shitty dad (including a brief line implying he has deadnamed her in the past)

Vespa didn’t realize she needed to worry about the storm until her head went under. 

She was with her dad today, inhabiting the old lighthouse that rarely flickered on without minutes of gentle coaxing from the controls. In her opinion, there was no reason to keep it running, it was older than he was and it’d never done anyone any good. At this point, Vespa was sure it was haunted by ghosts holding her father captive. 

She was trying to spend as little time as possible with him, something that had become a force of habit from back when he wouldn’t even call her by her real name. At least he was past that now. There were plenty of other things he wasn’t past. 

At least the little island where the lighthouse stood was ripe for exploring. The rocky outcroppings surrounding the beach housed shallow pools that were always filled with something interesting. Usually, it was just sand and washed up seaweed, but occasionally there were signs of sea life. 

Of course, sometimes she’d see shells. 

Vespa wasn’t too keen on pulling hermit crabs and sea snails from their homes, but lots of uninhabited shells washed into the tide pools that she liked to explore. Over the years, she’d managed to build up a collection in the pockets of her huge green coat. 

Today’s haul was good, better than most days, actually. She’d been at it for hours just scouring the perimeter of the lighthouse and onto the beach. The quiet shuffling of waves had kept her company as she searched for new treasures to make a shitty trip a little more bearable. So much so that she hadn’t noticed when that quiet shuffling turned into more of a raucous dance. 

She’d gotten the idea that going into the water might snag her a few more shells, so Vespa had rolled up her pants, taken off her jacket, and waded farther from the shore. Except, of course, then she’d seen something shining in the water that she  _ had  _ to chase into the ocean and managed to soak herself all the way up to her tank top. When water tickled at her armpits, she knew she’d gone too far, but when she turned around to head back to the beach, she could barely make it out from the roiling waves all around her. 

Well, this wasn’t good. 

Sure enough, she glanced at the sky to reveal dark grey storm clouds that she swore weren’t there a few minutes ago. The choppy water was lifting and tugging at Vespa’s body with the insurmountable force of nature. She couldn’t think of anything to do but lean into the movements in the hopes that the sea would eventually tire itself out of playing ragdoll with little Vespa Ilkay. 

Going limp worked up until it meant that waves were crashing over her head and leaving no time for her to take a breath. She thrashed and yelled as if the ocean were listening, but Vespa knew that no one was coming to her rescue, least of all the sea. 

Her last thought before she blacked out was of how alone she’d always been. 

No one would save Vespa Ilkay. 

* * *

“—die please. I’ve been trying to save your life for more than ten minutes now, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t die on me. I know that’s a lot to ask, but really I’m doing all the hard work of keeping you alive here, so—” 

Vespa woke to a beautiful voice berating her, warm hands pushing at her chest, and something weighing down her legs, and all she could do was flounder onto her side and cough up from her lungs what felt like the entire Pacific’s worth of seawater. 

“Wh—?” she tried to start when she got her breath back. The confused sound didn’t go anywhere before she was hacking again. 

“Shhhhh,” the beautiful voice said as its owner patted her heartily on the back. “You’ve got quite a lot of salt water making its home in your lungs right now. Probably be better if you didn’t try to talk yet.” 

Vespa continued trying to expel whatever was left inside of her for a few more seconds before she finally felt like she’d dislodged all the sea life from her rib cage. That was closer, closer than she’d ever wanted it to be. She must have almost drowned and been rescued by...whoever this was. 

“There, there, do you need anymore time to recover?” 

Or maybe she actually  _ had  _ drowned, and this beautiful voice was some kind of being from the afterlife sent to guide her to someplace far away from here. Although Vespa was having trouble figuring out what she could’ve done to deserve that kind of treatment. 

Instead of trying to puzzle anything else out, she decided to finally get a look at whoever had decided to pull her from the waves. 

The girl was just as breathtaking as her voice, with skin that almost seemed to shine in the sunlight and waves of red hair strewn with slick seaweed. She was easily the most beautiful girl Vespa had ever seen. She couldn’t have been more than a year older than Vespa herself, maybe 15. Huh, Vespa hadn’t thought anyone else her age even lived in the small town by the lighthouse. Especially not anyone with iridescent skin and fiery eyes. 

Vespa very quickly realized that the girl wasn’t wearing a shirt and she turned her head away, sure she was becoming bright red. Why the girl had been swimming in the ocean without even a bathing suit, she didn’t know. Maybe she should ask, now that she wasn’t going to spit seawater back in her face. 

“What—what are you doing here?”

“Well, I  _ was  _ rescuing you,” the girl said. “But someone seems a little ungrateful so I might be going soon.”

“T-thank you!” Vespa scrambled over herself to say. She still wasn’t looking at the girl, “Thanks for making sure I didn’t die. How...I didn’t think there was anyone my age in the whole town. And I didn’t think  _ anyone  _ but my dad and I came to the lighthouse.” 

Vespa felt a hand curl around her chin and tilt her head up to meet the girl’s eyes. The hand itself was rough and textured with...claws? And as soon as Vespa was looking at the girl head on, she noticed that it wasn’t that her skin was shining, but that she was covered in  _ scales.  _ Bright red scales that trailed across her cheeks and down her neck. Vespa’s eyes trailed with them, seeing that the girl didn’t need a shirt, her chest was bare and covered in the same scales as her brow. Looking further, she realized with a start that the weight she’d felt pinning her to the beach was a massive red fish tail that curled around her legs. 

_ What the fuck _ , Vespa thought to herself, though she didn’t realize she had verbalized her surprise until the other girl responded

“I see you’ve discovered what I was doing here,” the girl laughed. 

“What the fuck is going on?” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s a very bad word that you’re saying, you know.” 

“What—this can’t be real.” Vespa pulled a sand-covered hand up to rub at her face, “I’m dead, I have to be. I died and this is the afterlife or something and it still looks like the  _ stupid  _ lighthouse and—” 

“Oh, hush now,” the girl said. “We haven’t even exchanged names and you’re already calling me an angel.” 

Vespa gulped, letting the girl’s words wash over her in embarrassment. She usually wasn’t this useless over a pretty face, but the pretty face usually didn’t look like some kind of mermaid. (And honestly she was pretty useless over a pretty face.) 

“Look, I—I just drowned and woke up to a—a fish girl saving my life. Cut me some slack!” 

The girl’s face shifted into offense as she said, “I am not a  _ fish girl,  _ for your information. I suppose you would call me a siren, but I’d much rather you call me Buddy.” 

“ _ Buddy?  _ What does that mean? And why do you talk like a—I don’t know, like an old Hollywood starlet. You can’t be older than 15.” 

“It’s my name, at least translated so that you can understand it.” She opened her mouth and let out a sound that was both ear-splitting and alluring, interspersed with strange clicks. “That is also my name. And I’ll have you know that I’m 16. As for the other thing you said, I’m not entirely sure what you mean.” 

_ “Entirely sure,”  _ Vespa mimicked, “That’s exactly what I mean. Does your name really mean buddy?” 

“Are you always this rude? Perhaps if I said my name was Friend or Pal that would sound better to you? You haven’t even told me your own name, for the record.” 

Vespa blinked. Right, maybe some introductions were in order. 

“Vespa,” she said. “Name’s Vespa Ilkay.”

“Does your name really mean—mean, uh—” Buddy stopped, as if her mouth had run out in front of her. She cleared her throat. “Well, I’m not sure what Vespa  _ or  _ Ilkay means, but imagine that that remark was scathing, will you? I have a reputation to uphold.” 

“Who are you upholding it for? There’s no one on this beach but us.” 

“Well, I would like to think you’re very impressed by me. I did save your life,” Buddy said with a wink. Now that she knew what to look for, Vespa could see that Buddy’s eyelids were transparent and filmy. Vespa almost got caught up staring at the way they shifted across Buddy’s eyes. 

“If you’re quite done,” Buddy said, but there was a mischievous smile on her face, “I have places to be and people to placate with my presence.”

Suddenly, the thought of Buddy disappearing to the sea never to be seen again left a gnawing pit inside of Vespa’s stomach. She felt her heart drop in her chest. Oh, god, what had she gotten herself into?

“Don’t go.” Vespa said. 

“Well, I can’t stay here,” Buddy sighed, her long, fiery red tail flopping onto the sand, “I’m not exactly built for long walks on the beach.” 

“Will I ever see you again? If you do go?” 

Buddy blinked her clear eyelids at Vespa. She looked like she was considering something, going so far as to bring a clawed hand (with webbed fingers, Vespa could see now) up to her chin. 

“Hm…The aforementioned people I have to placate don’t like to stay in the same place for long, or visit one place too often.” She shrugged lightly at this, but Vespa could see the shadow that fell over her face when talking about it. It reminded Vespa of how she must look when she talked about her dad. 

“How about this,” Buddy said as she shifted her weight so that her tail was no longer pinning Vespa’s legs down and she wasn’t perched over Vespa in a...compromising way. “I’ll give you something to remember me by. A memento of the time you almost drowned, but didn’t thanks to the stunningly beautiful teenage siren that saved your life.” 

Vespa looked Buddy up and down questioningly, “Do you—uh, do you have pockets?” 

“You don’t need pockets when the sea provides.” 

Buddy twisted her torso so that she could reach into a neighboring tide pool. She dug around in the sand for a moment or two before her hand came away carrying the most beautiful shell that Vespa had ever seen. It caught the sun’s light and shone like a star in and of itself, iridescent like Buddy’s scales, but more of a pale, pearlescent color than her bright red. 

Vespa stared at the swirl of the shell, mesmerized. She definitely hadn’t picked up anything like that today. 

“So you know this was real,” Buddy said while brandishing the shell at her. 

Vespa took it and turned it over in her hands, relishing in the coolness of it on her fingers. It was still dripping a bit. She smoothed out the water on the surface with her thumb. 

“If you’re ever around the lighthouse...come find me, I guess. I don’t know how you’d do that considering you don’t have legs, but, you know. If you can.” 

“I assure you I’ll try.” 

“Right,” Vespa said, “Right, well, I guess this is goodbye? Thanks again for making sure I didn’t die tonight. I hope things work out with all those places and people you need to do whatever with.” 

Buddy laughed a laugh that made Vespa’s heart melt into the shoes she wasn’t wearing. Her voice really was amazing. 

“Not a problem. I’ll see you if I ever see you again, Miss Ilkay.” 

“Call me Vespa.” 

“Fine then,” Buddy said. “Vespa it is.” 

They stared at each other for a few moments, Vespa unsure if there was anything else she needed to say and Buddy unmoving from her position by the tide pool. After what felt like an eternity, Buddy opened her mouth with a sigh. 

“Vespa?” 

“Uh, yeah?” 

“Would you be a dear and help me back into the water?” 

“Oh—yeah, of course, Buddy.” 


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vespa goes into town and meets some familiar faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the gang's all here! 
> 
> cw for slightly more mentions of vespa's shitty dad and vespa's hallucinations

As Vespa shifted a box filled with whatever-the-fuck out of the way, coughing at the cloud of dust left in its wake, she couldn’t help but think that even while dead, her dad was finding ways to fuck with her life. 

It’d been close to thirty years since Vespa had set foot in the sleepy beach town of Ranga where she’d spent a little less than half of her childhood. After her brain had broken badly enough that she’d need meds for the rest of her life, she’d been determined never to see her father again. Well, she’d gotten her wish. 

But now, not only was she in Ranga, but she was on the little island off the coast of Ranga that housed the lighthouse that hadn’t been operated in almost ten years. 

Her dad had stayed on the property even after the lighthouse had gone completely under. She’d been told by an old woman in town when she’d gotten in from her flight that the local chamber of commerce had been asking him to do something with it to increase tourism for years, but he’d always refused. Well, now he was dead and left Vespa as the sole proprietor, so it was her decision to make. 

She didn’t know what the hell she was going to do. 

She opened up a box labeled “SILVERWARE” which was filled with paper fans that she had no idea how her father had gotten his hands on. The fans had idyllic scenes of the oceanside painted on them. She pushed the box away, grumbling under her breath about everything and nothing. 

She’d been going through boxes for hours. Her dad had managed to collect quite the amount of useless junk while she’d been ignoring his calls. And now, it was Vespa’s job to figure out what to do with it all. Yippee. Except the longer she spent sorting through bullshit, the more she felt like tearing her hair out. 

It didn’t help that her brain was so fried with everything going on that her meds were having trouble keeping up with the usual bouts of hallucinations they were supposed to keep at bay. Voices echoed throughout the empty lighthouse, some she recognized and some she didn’t. All of them insisted on telling her what a bad idea this was, and suddenly Vespa was really fucking tired of being in her own head. 

“I’m leaving,” she said to no one. She  _ knew  _ she was in the lighthouse alone, but the person standing in the corner soaking wet and staring at her eerily seemed to appreciate the message. She blinked and shook her head and suddenly the person was gone. Figures. 

Vespa made her way out of the lighthouse and into the little rowboat that took her from the island to Ranga proper. The journey was smooth and peaceful, something she relished. There were a few moments where she heard snatches of a beautiful song that she couldn’t remember ever hearing before. It was heavy and mournful, drifting through her head like an animal preparing to hibernate for the winter that’s not sure it’ll make it. She didn’t think her mind was capable of making music like that. If she wasn’t so uncomfortable with the way she was unraveling, she would be impressed.

She arrived at the little dock where the rowboat lived while she was in town. It was nothing special, just a long pier where a few of the townspeople kept their equally small rowboats. It was almost always devoid of people and Vespa liked it that way. Everyone in town had known her dad and people had been showering her in well wishes the minute her Uber had dropped her off at the general store. She was sick of it. 

The pier wasn’t empty this time when she tied up her boat. There was a large man with black hair streaked with gray and an impassive face set in soft wrinkles. He was probably around the same age as Vespa, give or take a few years. He didn’t scramble to offer his condolences in her “difficult time” as soon as her feet had touched wood at least. No, his face remained impassive as he watched her pass him by and head in the direction of the town. 

When she got within a foot of him she decided on a slight wave, and he gave her a slight wave back, never taking his eyes off her. She didn’t say anything and he didn’t either. It was such an unsettling encounter that she was almost sure she hallucinated it by the time she got into the town proper. 

Ranga wasn’t really anything more than a main street, some backroads, and a boatload of beachside property that old folks rented out as vacation homes while they spent their time in Colorado skiing their way to happiness or whatever. There were obviously people who lived in town, but they were more inland on the outskirts, barely included in the census for Ranga at all. Of course, all the shops and things had little apartments overhead for the owners to reside in, which came in handy during tourist season. 

Vespa didn’t really know where she was going, just that she had needed to get away from the godforsaken lighthouse and Ranga was the closest escape besides the Pacific ocean. She wandered down the main road and peered into tacky tourist shops that were selling overpriced boogie boards and shell jewelry. Nowhere seemed like an appealing place to stop at the moment. 

Then her stomach let out a loud growl and she realized she hadn’t eaten since she’d gotten into town the day before. The decision of where to go was made for her, as she sought out the nearest restaurant. 

A little diner proclaiming itself  _ The Carte Munch  _ was the first place she saw that she didn’t remember from thirty years ago, so, of course, she went inside. The door gave a pleasant little ding as she opened it. It wasn’t very big, just a hole-in-the-wall in a town of hole-in-the-walls, but the decor wasn’t as nauseatingly ocean-themed as everything else in Ranga seemed to be. In fact, the interior was all black and white, with painted on dramatic shadows and furniture straight out of a 1950s noir movie. So it had a gimmick, just a slightly less annoying one. 

She had maybe a second to take the place in before a very short woman with kinky black hair gathered into a big ponytail and pink cat-eye glasses barrelled up to her with a level of enthusiasm that Vespa tended to avoid. She smiled widely and Vespa could see that she had rainbow-banded braces on her teeth even though the woman couldn’t have been younger than 40. She was also holding a pad of what looked like scented pink paper. 

“Hello! Welcome to the Carte Munch _ ,  _ the place to be for any hungry dames or curious gentlemen. I’m Rita! And I’ll be your server today.” 

“Uh, hey,” Vespa rasped, taken aback by the woman—Rita’s—excitable demeanor. 

“Would you like a booth? Or a spot at the counter? Oh! Or d’ya wanna sit on the floor maybe and have a picnic? Or—or! Maybe we can set you up in the bosses’ bed and you can have  _ lunch in bed _ ! Which, now that I’m sayin’ it, don’t sound nearly as fancy as breakfast in bed, but you know it ain’t really breakfast time anymore, so you kinda missed your window, Miss Whatever-your-name-is. Maybe we can—” 

“Counter’ll be fine,” she said against Rita’s onslaught of words. Damn, could this woman talk. 

Rita nodded and led her to a spot at the linoleum counter, chatting her ear off the entire way. Vespa just tuned her out. After so many years with hallucinations demanding her attention, she got really good at tuning out unwanted input. 

As she approached the counter, she saw that there was a man behind the counter who looked to be making a pot of coffee. He was tall, really tall, with shoulder length black hair that went a little grey around the temples and a pair of red, square glasses resting on his nose. 

The man grinned sharply at her when she took her seat. Vespa eyed him distrustfully. 

“Hello, miss, what will it be for you today?”

“Can I just have some scrambled eggs and a black coffee?,” she said, scowling. 

The man shrugged and replied, “If the lady wants eggs at four o’clock in the afternoon then who am I to deny her?”

She was about to reply with something scathing when another voice echoed through a small window that Vespa could see led to the kitchen. A lady with a silky black eyepatch poked his head through and said teasingly to the man, “Ransom, are you antagonizing our customers?” 

“Why, love, I thought that was your job,”  _ Ransom _ replied, just as teasingly. 

“Not anymore, remember? Not since you stuck me in the back to waste away over a hot stove.” 

“I seem to recall an avid discussion about your discomfort with service professions  _ and  _ Rita’s complete inability to make a decent omelet being factors.”

“Yeah, well, I think I got a bum deal. Can’t go leaving a guy to his thoughts all alone back here, it’ll drive anyone crazy.” 

“I’m sure if you told the management team they’d take it under advisement.” 

“Considering you’re half the management team, this is me telling you.”

“And I’ll take it under advisement.” 

Vespa cleared her throat before they could continue steamrolling through their obvious weird mating ritual. She tapped the counter with her nails and said, “So, coffee?”

Ransom looked flustered for a brief moment, as if only just remembering she was sitting there. Yeah, that’s about what she figured. 

“Yes, of course, right away.” 

He pulled out a black mug from somewhere and began filling it with the pot he’d still been holding while going back and forth with the one-eyed cook. Vespa watched as the liquid swirled in the pot as if it were viscous and thicker than she’d ever known coffee to be. She blinked and suddenly it was back to being a regular pot of coffee. God, she was really getting tired of the whole “ _ too stressed for meds to be working properly” _ thing. 

“So, Miss…”

“Vespa,” she grumbled. 

“Miss Vespa,what brings you in town?”

She considered lying for a moment before she realized that if he didn’t already know, he would soon considering how fast gossip got around Ranga. 

“Family business.” There, short and sweet. Although she was curious…”I’m pretty sure this place was a yoga studio last time I was here, what’re you doing in Ranga?”

“Family business,” Ransom replied congenially. “At least, attempting to start one. My be-eyepatched wife heard tell of this building being for rent and we decided to try to put down roots here. It’s been a wonderful decision so far.”

Vespa knew he had no way of knowing the fact that she had spent the last 24 hours in Ranga trying to get away from the roots that had been strapping her in place against her will, but the words still almost made her flinch.

She was saved from replying when a bell dinged and the cook whose name she still didn’t know pushed a plate of scrambled eggs through the little window. 

“Eggs are ready,” he said lightly. “So you can stop talking that poor woman’s ear off.” 

“Really, Juno, I don’t know how many times I need to tell you that you’re  _ supposed  _ to make conversation with customers.” Ransom said, rolling his eyes fondly. 

“Tell me again when she stops giving you a death glare.” 

Juno peered at her and Vespa felt all at once like a specimen under glass. The longer he looked at her the more the brown of his visible eye seemed to magnify and tighten around her. 

“You just got in, but you’ve been here before. I heard you tell Ransom that you remember this place as a yoga studio, that was nearly thirty years ago, way before I’d even heard of Ranga. And you said you were here on family business...That have anything to do with the newly-vacant lighthouse off the coast?” 

Vespa scowled even harder. She turned a murderous eye to Juno and said, “That’s none of your business. Didn’t know I was signing up for an interrogation when I ordered lunch.” 

“Now, now, it seems you can take the detective out of his private investigation agency but you can’t take the agency out of the detective.” Ransom said, laughing what Vespa guessed was supposed to be a charming laugh. “We don’t need to talk about whose lighthouse or what family business, do we, dear?” 

Juno seemed to take the hint, thank god. He didn’t bother replying to Ransom, just rolling his eye fondly and going back to doing something with the stove. Vespa didn’t know what, considering she was the only person in the diner right then. 

Her eggs were eaten in blissful silence. Even the voices that liked to plague her didn’t make an appearance while she shoved her fork into her mouth. She finished off her plate and drank the last of her coffee within ten minutes. She had to admit, it was pretty good food. 

Distracted by pulling bills out of her pocket to pay for her small meal, Vespa didn’t notice when Juno came out from the kitchen and stood over her behind the counter. He was much shorter than Ransom. 

“Hey, I didn’t mean to hit a raw nerve back there, but I just want you to know...I know how hard family stuff like this can be. If you need to get away and be around people, the Carte Munch is 24 hours and me and Ransom are here more often than not,” Juno said, looking at her with an expression she didn’t want to think about. 

Vespa shook her head. She said, “I said it’s none of your business. You don’t even know my name.” 

He had the gall to smile crookedly at her. She didn’t look him in the face long enough to catch any smugness, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She just got tired of looking him in the eye. 

“Vespa, was it? You said it to Ransom earlier.” He held out a hand. “I’m Juno. Juno Steel.”

Vespa frowned, but reached out and shook his hand, tightening her grip on his fingers ever so slightly before pulling away. “Vespa Ilkay, but you already knew that.”

“Well, Vespa, like I said, me and Ransom are pretty much always here. I get not wanting to talk about it, but...if you ever need to, feel free to stop by. Being the owner means no one can yell at me if I need to close up shop unexpectedly except my husband, and between you and me, I’ve got him pretty whipped.” 

She didn’t really know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything, just grunted, nodded and slid off her barstool to leave. She passed the waitress, Rita, on her way out, who sent her off with a huge smile and an enthusiastic wave. The door dinged a second time as she opened it onto the empty main street. It was only about 4:30, but everything in Ranga liked to close around 5:00. Everything except the Carte Munch apparently. 

Vespa puttered around town for a bit longer, weaving between buildings and alleyways, but she couldn’t think of a good enough excuse for herself not to head back to the lighthouse. The sun would be going down soon, and she didn’t know if she’d be able to make the boat trip back to the nameless island in the dark. 

When she arrived back at the little pier, the man she’d seen was still there, only this time he didn’t look up at her. She had no idea what he was actually doing but right then he appeared to be staring at the ocean cryptically.

“Uh, do you have a boat here?” She asked. 

“I am meditating,” he replied, his voice like a smooth stone, “The ocean can be very calming.” 

“Right...okay.”

Vespa couldn’t help but stare at the man for a few moments. He turned to stare back at her. The wind whistled past her ears and she tasted salt in the air. A memory of the mournful song she’d heard out at sea floated into her mind, unbidden. She supposed the ocean could be very calming. 

When the silence shifted into uncomfortable territory, Vespa thought about grumbling past the man and into her boat, but she was curious about something. She asked, “Is that what you were doing earlier? Meditating?” 

“I was packing up. I had been fishing. This pier is an ideal location. There are strange fish in these waters.” 

She blinked.

“Strange fish.” She said flatly.

“Yes, very strange. The ocean is a strange place. I’m sure you will discover that soon, if you plan to stay in the lighthouse.” 

“I don’t,” Vespa scowled, “But thanks for the tip.” She hunched her shoulders and stomped down the dock to where her little rowboat was tied up. The knot kept slipping from her fingers and she growled under her breath. 

The man didn’t stop looking at her. She wasn’t a fan. His eyes were thoughtful, but there was too much depth in his expression for her to get a proper read on him. She tried to angle herself so that even as she was preparing to get back in her boat, her back wasn’t turned to him. 

“You are very stupid for coming here,” the man said. 

Vespa whipped around. “What did you just say to me?” She bit out. 

He just blinked at her blankly. She wanted to wipe that expression off his face. 

“I did not say anything.” He said after a moment. “Are you alright?” 

Didn’t say...Fuck, she was usually good about not being tricked by her hallucinations, but she was out of practice. She’d been on good meds and little stress for too long to remember to fact check everything she thought she heard or saw. Now she’d made an idiot of herself. 

“Whatever,” she mumbled, turning back to step into her boat, “I’m fine. I’ll see you around.” 

“I would like that. My name is Jet Sikuliaq. And you are Vespa Ilkay. It is nice to finally meet you.” 

She didn’t even bother asking him how he knew her name. Small town gossip gets around. 

“Yeah, I’m Vespa.” She tried to think of what else to say, “Good to meet you too, I guess. I’ll, uh, see you later.” She sat back in the boat and grabbed the oars, getting ready to push off the pier with a hand. Sikuliaq cleared his throat before she could get going. 

“I hope you find the strange fish I spoke of,” he said. “They are quite a sight.”

Vespa waved a hand at him and said, “Yeah sure,” before rowing her way out into the open ocean. She couldn’t resist a glance back to see him standing straight against the wind with his eyes closed and a small smile on his face. Huh. 

The ride back was uneventful. She didn’t hear any more songs, although she did see a sea serpent breach the waves and almost fell into the water in shock before shaking her head and chalking it up to a hallucination. She almost wished she had music. Turns out rowing a boat by yourself while the sun set was boring as hell. Earlier that day, her mind had been occupied by thoughts of going into town and getting away from the ghost of her father, but now she didn’t even have something to distract herself with. All she could think about were the cold, empty rooms waiting for her.

She considered trying to go through more boxes when she got back, but the task seemed insurmountable for her to even try at the moment. Instead of picking through all the shit her dad decided to hoard, she shucked off her pants and flopped down on her air mattress. She didn’t even bother getting a sleep shirt on, just curling under her blanket and shutting her eyes as tightly as she could. 

Vespa’s fists didn’t unclench until sleep eventually came for her, hours later. 


	3. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Man, how many times is Vespa almost going to drown in this fic?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for almost drowning twice (once in a dream), more mentions of vespa's shitty dad, and briefly implied sexual content with juno and nureyev (nothing explicit)

She was on the beach. 

She could see the towering lighthouse in the corner of her vision, resolute and solid in the face of the every shifting ocean. The bright colors of the sunset bled into the waves that were crashing all around her. It must have been high tide because the shore was doing nothing to hold back the onslaught of water. 

She heard a song. It was the same song she’d heard the other day, melancholy and soulful and echoing on the sea breeze. Suddenly, she knew she needed to find the person singing, she couldn’t think of anything more important than hearing the song at its source. 

Tilting her head to listen for a moment, she took off running down the beach. Her feet were bare and plunging into the wet sand with every step, causing her to stumble, but she did not stop. The wind whipped her green hair into her eyes, causing her vision to falter, but she did not stop. Every second the sun dipped deeper under the horizon, causing the sky to darken, but she did not stop. 

That voice waited for her. 

After hours or minutes or seconds of sand squishing under her toes, she realized that the song wasn’t coming from the beach, but from the ocean. It’s melody flowed around the roiling waves and all but dug her into the ground with its weight. 

She changed tactics immediately. Her heels skid with the force of her turn towards the water. She ran into the sea like she was reuniting with a lover. She barely even registered the cold sting of the water on her skin, so overcome with the force of the music all around her. 

She kept running until her feet were barely making contact with the floor beneath her. The ocean pushed her body around as if it were nothing but a toy. She could barely breathe with all the water going into her lungs.

The sky was a washed out grey now, storm clouds rumbling across the horizon. The colors all around her were muted by the lack of light. She wasn’t sure if there really was no moon or if the brewing storm blacked out its shine entirely. She didn’t think she was even traveling in a straight line, but she didn’t care. Somewhere out there was a singer that was calling to her and she needed to find them.

As the waves finally pulled her under, she couldn't help but regret that she’d drowned so fruitlessly before she could find the source of the song. 

Then Vespa Ilkay woke up. 

* * *

Vespa cracked her eyes open with a groan, scrubbing at her face with a shaking hand. Fuck, that’d been some dream. She could barely remember it, but it still settled uneasily in her stomach all the same. Only a week living in the breaking down memory of her dad and she was having cryptic-ass nightmares about the ocean every night. 

She checked her phone and saw that it was only 8:00 AM. Jesus, she’d gone to bed at four last night, and her stupid brain had decided that four hours of sleep was enough to trudge through the shit her father had left for her to clean up. Every day it felt like she found more bullshit hiding in the cracked walls of the lighthouse. She didn’t even know where her dad had gotten the money to buy all this stuff. If he’d somehow been wealthy, she’d never seen a cent of it. He’d just wasted it all on this place like it mattered to anyone but him. 

No way. She wasn’t gonna touch a single box today. Yeah, she was trying to get out of here as fast as possible, but tacking on one day to a seemingly endless schedule of sorting and trashing and donating for the sake of giving herself a break didn’t seem like a bad idea. 

She remembered what Steel had said to her before she’d left the Carte Munch on her first day here. If she ever needed to talk...yeah well she wasn’t gonna go spilling her guts to some upstart cook in a town she didn’t even like, but maybe it’d be nice to have some company besides the shadows that crawled across the cold stone walls. 

She got dressed and combed her fingers through her green hair in an effort to make it more presentable. God, she needed a haircut. That’d be the first thing she’d do when she finally left this shithole for good. A haircut and the longest shower of her life. For reasons unknown to her, the only bathroom in the lighthouse was crowded with a large clawfoot tub in place of something more practical. She guessed dear old dad took his luxury where he could get it. If Vespa never took a bath again after she made it off Ranga, it would be too soon. 

Without too much trouble, she rowed her small boat to the dock on Ranga. Siquliak was there again, this time with his fishing pole out and a bright pink tackle box covered in stickers placed next to him. He nodded at Vespa as she tied her boat up. 

“Good morning, Vespa,” he said in that solid-stone voice of his. 

“Morning,” she grunted back. “Have you—uh, you been out here for long?” 

Jet shook his head. He laid his hand across the wood of the pier as if stroking it would give him a way to answer Vespa’s question. His hands were dry and cracked from the salty sea air, sailor’s hands. 

“I have been here since five, however I won’t be staying much longer. There is a storm coming.” 

Vespa’s mind flashed to her dream and the storm that had swept her away in its riptide. She looked up at the sky only to see clear blue shining back at her. Fluffy white clouds drifted around a yellow sun like something out of a picture book. Rain, yeah right. And she thought she was the one who was supposed to be seeing things. 

Vespa tried to keep the disbelief from her voice as she said, “Right, a storm.” 

Siquliak nodded but made no further comment, turning his attention back to his lure bobbing on the waves. 

“Why don’t you take a boat out?” She asked, curiosity suddenly taking over, “Wouldn’t you catch more fish farther away from the shore?” 

“I become seasick when I fish very easily, Vespa. It is not a pleasant feeling nor do I wish to dirty my boat with vomit.”

“Seasick? But you—” She stopped herself. “You know what, never mind. Hope you catch something before it ‘storms’.” With those last words, Vespa stomped her way down the dock. 

Walking into town, Vespa didn’t really have a destination in mind, but as she found herself approaching a familiar little diner, she realized that maybe her feet had other ideas. The Carte Munch was open, like, she assumed, it always was. The 24-hour sign blinked at her from the window. She was tempted to peek through the glass and see if Ransom and Steel were still managing the counter and kitchen, but she wasn’t  _ that  _ eager. 

Instead, she walked through the door and braced herself for whatever familiar or unfamiliar faces she’d see as the little bell dinged. Rita greeted her with an eager wave, “Oh, Miss Vespa, you’re back! The bosses’ll be happy to see ya. You know we were just talkin’ about that lighthouse a’ yours, and how it’s pretty old and don’t really do anything anymore so maybe whoever’s at the top of lighthouse chain of command should think about—”

“Hey, Rita,” Vespa cut her off, if only so she wouldn’t have to hear about the damn lighthouse anymore. 

Rita bliked like she was being reset, then shook her head and nodded at the counter. 

“Feel free to take a seat! Mistah Steel and Mistah Ransom are cleaning the kitchen while we don’t got any customers, but to tell you the truth, I think they might be doin’ somethin’  _ else  _ back there if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, barf,” Vespa scowled, but she sat down at a stool reasonably far from the little kitchen window. She didn’t wanna hear any of  _ that.  _

After a few minutes of Rita prattling on about the show she’d watched last night that was a retelling of the remake of an old Hollywood classic, this time with more werewolves, Vespa felt her eyes starting to glaze over. With a quick glance to assure that there still wasn’t anyone else in the restaurant besides her and Rita (how did this place stay open?) she hopped the counter and started dinging the little kitchen bell as many times as she could.

“Steel, Ransom, playtime’s over,” she growled while aggressively pressing the bell. 

There were some shuffling noises and something that sounded suspiciously like pants being zipped up before Juno’s head popped out from the window. His hair was tousled like someone had been running their hands through it and there was a smeared lipstick stain on his jaw.

“Rita, what—Oh, it’s you.” He eyed her with a teasing grin. 

“Yeah, it’s me, a paying customer who’d like some food sometime today, please.”

“Sheesh, give a lady a second, will you? This kitchen was  _ really  _ dirty.” Juno said, teasing grin turned shit-eating. 

“Ugh, spare me the details,” Vespa rolled her eyes. “Just make me some hashbrowns and bacon, will you?”

“Breakfast food at breakfast time, color me impressed.” 

Vespa was about to retort back when Ransom emerged from the kitchen door wearing a significantly higher-necked shirt than he’d been wearing the last time she saw him. Unlike Steel, she didn’t see a misplaced mark on him and his hair was artfully tousled. Somehow that was even worse. 

“Good morning, Miss Vespa. What brings you to our fine establishment today?” 

Vespa...didn’t really know how to reply.  _ Nothing _ , was her first instinct. Maybe,  _ I think I just wanted to talk to another real person.  _ Or even,  _ The bones of that old lighthouse feel like a cage sometimes and the only way I know how to crack its ribs is escaping before my thoughts can keep me prisoner too. _

Instead, she shrugged and said, “Got tired of organizing junk that I never wanna see again. Decided a change of pace was in order.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “Besides, I was hungry.” 

“Is that what’s in there?” Juno asked, “Piles of junk?”

Vespa shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to spend another second thinking about that stupid place, especially because she was gonna have to go back to it tonight, but if she didn’t tell  _ someone  _ about the dragon’s hoard her dad managed to collect and lock away in his ivory tower then she was gonna lose it all over again. 

“Yep, whole place is filled with boxes of shit you’d never want or need. Most of it’s old and falling apart so I don’t even know if I can sell it. I’ve been going through everything and trying to keep track of what’s all there so I can figure out what to do with it.”

Juno looked surprised that she answered his question, but it didn’t shut him up.

“You’re not just gonna keep it all there?” He asked.

“Fat chance I’m using it as a storage room for the next thirty years like dear old dad decided to,” Vespa said, snorting, “I don’t even know what I’m doing with the lighthouse, but I doubt it’s gonna stay around long. This town has enough tourist appeal without adding a vengeful ghost to the mix.” 

Juno’s eye softened as he said almost gently, “I get that...The last thing anyone needs are reminders of people it’s better if we all forgot.”

Vespa prickled at his soft tone, but his words left her feeling too weary to bite a remark back at him. She watched Juno’s gaze turn to Ransom, who was fumbling with the coffee machine as if his job wasn’t to make the coffee. When Juno spoke again, his words held the weight of a love that Vespa Ilkay could never hope for behind them. 

“Sometimes it’s better to tear everything down and make something new entirely, with people you actually want in your life. Ransom and Rita taught me that. Maybe the lighthouse is just waiting to become whatever makes you happiest, instead of the miserable storage locker it is now.” 

Vespa wondered what it was about Juno Steel and leaving her scrambling for some kind of reply. She wasn’t great with words at the best of times, but when things got uncomfortably emotional she was even less sure of what she was doing. 

She was saved from having to actually respond by Ransom banging a hand to the side of the coffee maker and turning to his partner, saying, “Juno, dear, could you come out here and help me with this blasted thing. It’s refusing to cooperate once again.” 

Juno blinked. “Yeah, honey, one sec,” he said, then turned to Vespa, “I’ll get your food going after I rescue my husband. Think about what I said, okay?” 

Vespa found herself nodding. 

The rest of her time in the Carte Munch passed by uneventfully. Steel was even more frustrated with the coffee maker than Ransom was, and eventually Rita had to come over and practically pull the whole thing apart and put it back together in the span of a minute or two to get it to start working again. While Vespa stared at the guts of the machine, she saw huge black beetles crawling through it. When no one reacted, she dismissed them as fakes, but she still declined a cup when Ransom offered it. 

A few people showed up, and Rita seated them all and talked all their ears off, but she seemed to be hovering around Vespa while she was there. Rita wasn’t too keen on conversation so much as rambling, but the steady stream of TV facts and movie plotlines was comforting in a weird way. It distracted her from the other voices that were echoing around her skull. 

Steel and Ransom continued to trade sickening banter through the kitchen window, which she added her own color commentary to when she thought they were being a little too insufferable. She had to admit that the company was nice, and no one tried to talk to her about the shithole she was trying to avoid again. 

The morning turned to afternoon, and before she knew it, the sky was much darker than it had been a few minutes ago. Vespa checked her watch and blinked. It was only 3 o’clock, there was no reason the sun shouldn’t still be shining. Then she thought back to Jet Siquliak on the dock that morning insisting it was gonna storm. Guess he wasn’t completely full of shit. 

“I better get going,” Vespa said idly, glancing out the window at the sky. 

“Miss Vespa, you can’t go home now!” Rita said with wide eyes, “It’s gonna be pourin’ any minute and you’ve still gotta row that tiny little boat back to the lighthouse.” 

Vespa shook her head, even as a memory of another storm flashed in her mind. A bad feeling started to take root in the pit of her stomach, but she could already hear the reality filters in her mind working overtime to squash her paranoia. Going back to that place wouldn’t be the death of her, she wouldn’t let it. Besides, she had nowhere to stay if the storm lasted until it got dark and she  _ couldn’t  _ make it back. Better to leave before things got bad than wait it out and potentially be stranded in Ranga. 

“I need to get back, Rita, I’ll be fine,” she reassured, even if her stomach twisted at the words like a called shot. 

Vespa dug some bills out of her wallet and hopped off the barstool she’d been parked on for the last few hours. At some point a party of 12 had wandered in, so Juno was too busy in the kitchen to do more than wave a quick goodbye. Ransom was running around refilling drinks, but he managed to nod politely at her on her way out. 

The wind was picking up by the time Vespa got to the same dock as always. Jet was nowhere in sight. She quickly untied her boat and climbed in, rowing against raucous waves. About halfway through the journey, Vespa started to think that maybe it had been a bad idea, leaving for the lighthouse. 

She could barely keep the boat turned in the right direction. She’d never been one to get seasick, but every push and pull triggered a wave of nausea. God, it hadn’t even started raining properly and she was already soaked and shivering in the tumultuous air. The futility of her little journey made itself known when a particularly strong bout of waves pushed her toy of a boat over, capsizing it and dumping her into the sea. 

Vespa scrambled for purchase on the side of the boat, but only managed to dunk herself underwater a few times. She was dead, even if she got the boat turned over, she still wouldn’t make it to the lighthouse. 

Her last thought before a wave pulled her under and one of the oars came to smack her directly in the head, was that she couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to do this to herself. 


	4. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vespa reunites with someone from long ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! just wanna give a heads up that i may or may not be able to update next monday, and, related to that, this fic might not be finished by the end of february. i've been having some unexpected health issues that don't seem to be getting better and it's making doing anything really hard, so i'm using all my energy just to get my school work in on time and haven't been able to write much. i was in the process of setting up a doctor's appointment but i'm in texas and this winter storm has basically shut the entire state down for the next week so that's probably not going anywhere any time soon. i'm determined to finish this fic as soon as possible, but completing the entire thing in february just might not be feasible unfortunately
> 
> thank you to those who have been reading along and hopefully you'll see me with a new chapter next monday as well! and to all those in the same boat as me here in texas, please stay warm and stay safe! 
> 
> cw for a brief moment of vespa doubting that something she's seeing is real

Vespa woke to a song. 

The strangest thing about that was the fact that Vespa woke  _ at all _ . She didn’t remember much from her ill-fated attempted journey to the lighthouse, but she could piece enough together to know that she shouldn’t be alive, let alone conscious enough to hear the song that echoed through her dreams and across the water. 

But Vespa wasn’t in the water anymore. She quickly took stock of her body, eyes still shut against a darkened sky. All her limbs seemed to still be in working order, if the wet sand she could feel crunching and rolling under her fingers was anything to go by. Her head ached miserably, and she knew if she brought a hand to rest on her skull she would find a lump there the size of a small planet. Overall, she felt like she’d been crusted over and peeled off like a particularly stubborn scab on someone’s knee. 

At least she had the music her mind had decided to conjure. It was the same full-bodied tune that she’d been hearing since she came to this place, and Vespa couldn’t pretend she didn’t think it was beautiful. With a long groan, she cracked open her eyes and almost jumped at the sight of a woman singing over her. Huh, she didn’t normally get much in the way of beautiful women in her hallucinations. Usually they were more in the vein of the man who’d ruined her life and strange monsters she’d been scared of since childhood. 

Not only was this woman beautiful, she was oddly...familiar. Like Vespa had seen her before, at least a version of her. She had bright red hair covering half of a face that seemed to catch the light and shine, and then Vespa realized that the woman’s face was shining due to the smatterings of scales that lined her cheeks where they weren’t covered by her hair. 

She remembered why this woman looked so familiar, Vespa had seen a girl like her before, thirty years ago on this same beach. She’d chalked the memory up to something her delusional mind had called forth when she was at her most vulnerable. Even with this woman in front of her, she still wasn’t sure it had been real. After all,  _ this  _ Buddy was probably just another figment. 

It wasn’t until the likely hallucination responded that Vespa realized she’d spoken out loud.

“I’ll have you know that I’m very real, darling, at least the last time I checked. That would’ve been at, oh, ten o’clock this morning. Perhaps I’ve leapt out of existence since then.” 

Smooth, warm, with an untraceable accent that Vespa couldn’t help but become entranced by the lilting flow.It was like she could practically see the words pour out of the other woman’s mouth. Buddy’s voice left her heart fluttering so rapidly in her chest that it assured there was no way she could be dead. She tried to think of a reply, but her brain refused to supply her with the basic building blocks of conversation while she lay stretched out underneath the siren.

“Uh—gah—what?” was what came out of her mouth. 

“You know, Vespa, I had been under the impression that you would be more happy to see me.” Buddy’s voice continued. “This is, after all, my second time saving your beautiful hide. I suppose I’d anticipated more fanfare.”

Now that Vespa’s eyes were open and her wits were more solidly about her, she could feel Buddy’s very real fingers carding through her green hair. The fin of Buddy’s long fishtail stretched over Vespa’s feet. the rest of it curled around Vespa’s comparably small frame. She wasn’t particularly short or tall, more of an average height, but the tail was almost impossibly long compared to her legs, maybe taking up seven feet all on its own. 

“Buddy, is that really you?” Vespa found herself asking. 

“Buddy, at your service,” the siren said with a little flourish of her hand. “Lovely to see you again dear, though I do wish the circumstances were better.”

She’d moved from her position leaning directly over Vespa and was instead propped up on her side next to where Vespa was laying in the sand. Vespa let out another groan as she adjusted her position to get a better look at Buddy. 

“I didn’t—I thought I made you up. This beautiful siren girl who rescued me. I didn’t think that you’d actually  _ exist. _ ” 

“While meeting you was like a dream to me, I can assure you that it did happen. And it’s been something that’s kept me comfort on some very hard days.” Buddy said. 

Her eyes were shining in the light of the moon. It must have been late, or maybe early, if the way the sun was starting to peak over the horizon was anything to go by. If Vespa remembered right, sunrise was at seven that morning. Huh. 

“What  _ happened _ ?”

“Well,” Buddy started, “I happened to be in the area when that little dinghy you row tipped over and you came spilling out. I didn’t manage to get to you in time before you hit your head quite hard on an oar and completely passed out. I took your unconscious body back to the beach that I assumed you were going to—you’d managed to veer quite off course, darling—and I’ve been waiting for you to wake up ever since.”

“You...you’ve been waiting for hours? What if I’d never woken up?”

Buddy scoffed, like she couldn’t imagine a reality in which Vespa had died. 

“Oh, not to worry, that’s what the song was for.” She said, batting a hand out. “Though, I’ll admit, it’s not really meant to be a healing apparatus. It’s more for leading humans to their deaths—”

“ _ What? _ ”

“—Although I can’t recall ever using it for that in my time. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I did save your life.” 

Vespa’s eyes were bugged out and her fists were clenched into the sand. 

“That song,” she said, “I’ve been hearing it when I row and—and in my dreams. Have you been trying to kill me?” 

Buddy, for her part, looked shocked that Vespa would ever assume that to be true. 

“No, no, obviously not. If I were trying to kill you, you’d be dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “No, I suppose I had hoped to...leave an impression. A bit like a lovesick teenager throwing pebbles at a window.” She laughed gently at herself. “It must have worked somewhat if you remember the song to begin with.” 

“Yeah, I guess you could say it worked,” Vespa rolled her eyes, “Been wondering where the hell my brain managed to find something that nice. Guess it wasn’t my brain after all.”

Buddy laughed like she’d told a funny joke.

“Tell me, Vespa dear, do you often hear songs with no discernable source drifting on the wind?”

“You’d be surprised,” Vespa grumbled. 

“What—?”

“Anyway,” she interrupted, knowing a storm cloud had probably settled over her eyes. That’s a conversation they could have later. “What have you been doing back here? I thought you said you didn’t visit the same place twice.”

Now it was Buddy’s turn to look uncomfortable with the topic at hand. She shifted on her palms, clawed fingers digging deeply into the sand. 

“It’s true that we’re a migratory sort,” she started, “but I’ve recently had a...falling out with those who wish to keep moving. I came here as a reprieve while I decide what my next move will be. You just so happened to be here at the same time.” Buddy smiled at Vespa with thin, razor-sharp teeth, “What a happy coincidence.” 

“I’ll say. You saved my goddamn life.” Vespa still seemed dazed by this fact, “I don’t know what I can do to make it up to you.” 

“Nonsense,” Buddy scoffed. “You don’t have to do a thing. Although…” she glanced at the steadily rising sun casting the beach in orange light, “if you could allow me a rather abrupt goodbye, that would be nice. I’m afraid I have an appointment that I must keep.”

“Appointment? Sure, but—”

“Thank you, darling, your kindness will not be forgotten,” she said as she began scooting her way back to the water with her arms.

“Kindness? Buddy—”

“This is goodbye for now. I’ll not have to save your life again, I hope. I would stay inside during the next storm if I were you.”

“Seriously, Buddy—”

“Oh, and do get that head of yours checked out by an actual doctor. My song can only do so much for the healing process.” 

“Buddy!” Vespa all but shouted. 

Buddy, who was now almost fully submerged in the shallows, pushed herself into a more straight-backed position at Vespa’s voice. 

“Yes?” She said inquiringly. 

“Can I see you again? Without almost dying?” Vespa’s voice was gruff in anticipated rejection, but she couldn’t keep the note of hope out of her words. 

“Yes,” Buddy repeated, looking surprised for just a moment before her expression morphed into one of warmth. “Yes, of course. Be here tomorrow two hours after sunrise. I’ll wait for you.” 

Vespa nodded back at her. She said, “I’ll make it.” 

With that, Buddy pushed her body further into the water until she was completely submerged, her tail no longer curling awkwardly but instead extending fully in the ocean. She took off through the waves, oddly enough in the direction of Ranga. Vespa shook her head, wondering what that appointment Buddy had could possibly be. 

She worked herself up on wobbly legs and whistled her way down the beach towards the lighthouse. Despite the potential head injury and the fact that she had sand covering every inch of her body, this day was actually shaping out to be a good one. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> catch me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/GHOSTZVNE) talking about all things vesbud and more! 
> 
> comments and kudos make me feel like i just got a cool mermaid gf so feel free to leave some if you enjoy the fic!


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